Towards the 8th General Assembly July 2019

By Olga K., VDB
(From the VDB Formation Magazine 'Crescere' n.4/2017')

Rome, 18 December 2017 -- “The world is knocking at our hearts”- Give me a drink” (John 4:7) During the 100th anniversary of the VDB (Volunteers of Don Bosco) secular institute the World President, Olga K. also informed the members about the preparation journey towards the next 8th General Assembly scheduled for 2019. Main focus is on 'Missionary Discernment' for the VDB moving according the Church dream of Pope Francis:

How should we be present in the world? What shall we do and how should we do it?

Moreover, how must we change ourselves in order to meet the challenges we are now called out to do?

Objectives:

• To deepen the importance of the VDB specific mission has in our life.
• To evaluate our responsibility to the mission, as a response to the Spirit who sends us.
• To identify the most urgent needs of people today, especially of our recipients and to reflect on the profound causes of these needs, to be able to intervene.
• To identify our most effective responses in order to make fruitful our being light and leaven in the world.

The theme

There emerges in the Church a stronger urgency that each member can give concrete answers to the challenges of today’s world. But today, the world is changing so rapidly that each generation must constantly adapt to new situations. Many times, young people prepare for their entire childhood and youth to the realities that they will face in maturity, and when they reach adulthood, it is already all changed and they must adapt to it without any preparation.

We Christians often, in society, feel as missionaries “ad gentes,” driven by the urgency to bring the Gospel values to all secular structures. Our specific vocation calls us to look for ways on how to “incarnate” in all the realities that surround us, illuminated by the words of St. Paul: “Do not be conformed to this world.”

There are many challenges that call out to us today. One of these is the new IT culture: a real “continent” where you meet millions of people with their thoughts, their ideas, their difficulties, their personal joys... It is “in these spaces that we build the general ideas, which then affect the lives of individuals and of social groups, which can condition the structures of the same society, families, nation and international politics.

The man of today lives in this new virtual world of culture, and we, VDB cannot stay out or ignore this reality: we must study it, put ourselves in it and make our contribution for building up the Kingdom of God.

There are also more serious challenges: wars, terrorism, social ignorance, selfishness, poverty, material and social insecurity, lack of values, religious wars, migration, and the rejection of diversity. This is the atmosphere in which man lives and where many times, he finds a stable reference point, his Center. We too, are daughters of this era, but as daughters of God, we were chosen by Him to be docile instruments in his hands to participate in the evangelizing mission of the whole Church.

Full text of the VDB General Assembly information is available online:

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